The members of Class 1-A stepped off the bus and escaped the confines of that hot, cramped metal box carting them off across the countryside in favour of some fresh air after hours on end of putting up with the pure torture of it all. Ochako stumbled across the loose dirt and gravel and was joined by Mina and Tsu as she took the chance to stretch her legs. She was excited to have this time when all her best friends in the world would be in the same place for the whole week, but her mood had been brought way down by having to sit in that tiny box of hot metal and even hotter teenagers driving through the region of Japan that was populated with the least trees, it seemed, so there was no shade. Only misery. It was a good thing that Ochako hadn't grown up with the ability to keep an air conditioning unit on all the time during the summer, so she was pretty good at handling the heat, but some of her other classmates didn't seem to have been afforded such an experience. She walked around with Mina and Tsu, complaining about the heat and feeling bad about it once Tsu claimed to be thoroughly enjoying herself, since her froggy nature was opposed to the cold, so she loved summers, especially rainy ones. Speaking of Tsu's froggy nature, Ochako was never going to confess that she only just then understood Froppy as a hero name.
"Listen up," Aizawa said, also climbing out of the bus. The students' conversations all stopped as they shifted their collective attention to their teacher. "Camp is only twenty kilometres north from here. Make sure that you're prepared."
"Got it!" the class said in unison, or some variation of it.
"Wait!" Mineta said, emerging from the crowd of students and drawing all eyes to him. "You said this was a bathroom stop! Where are the bathrooms?"
"Huh, yeah. Now that you say that," Sero said, glancing around nervously.
The class all began to shift their eyes around worriedly. There were no bathrooms in sight. The clearing they'd been let out onto was just that, a clear dirt and gravel area that had protective railing to keep people from falling off the ledge and into the deep, dark forest below. Ochako, Mina and Tsu instinctually stepped away from the ledge when their attention was brought to the fact that Aizawa had positioned the class between himself and the ledge. Was he going for another rational deception or was he just joking? There was no way to tell, and that didn't sit right with Ochako. Something deep down in her gut told Ochako that something was going to happen, and that she wouldn't like it. After all, there hadn't been a day at UA yet where everything had gone her way completely so far, so why would the universe start handing her easy wins right then and there?
"About that," Aizawa said with the same flat tone he always used.
A car drove around one of the winding corners of the countryside road, and pulled up to the clearing. Three figures emerged, two of whom Ochako recognised instantly. The first to climb out of the car was the pro hero Mandalay, of the hero team the Wild, Wild Pussycats. Her costume was iconic, the deep red version of the Pussycats' standard uniform — the boots, the skirt with the feline tail at the back, the clawed paw gloves, and the sleeveless top. The red markings on her face, styled like cat whiskers, almost glowed in the oppressive summer heat. The second figure was just as recognisable as the first, another member of the Pussycats, Pixie-Bob. Her uniform was just like Mandalay's only a light blue colour instead of the red of her teammate. She also painted blue dots on her cheeks instead of Mandalay's signature, and wore a tinted visor that supposedly worked with her Quirk. The only person that Ochako didn't recognise was a young child, seemingly a boy who couldn't be older than four or five. His red cap with what looked like devil horns on it was certainly memorable, but other than that, he was a total stranger to Ochako. Mina questioned under her breath if any of the Pussycats had children, but Ochako didn't think so. The boy didn't share the same hair colour with any of the heroes on that team, so he must have been a guest of theirs. Weird.
"Hey, kids!" Mandalay said with a confident smile. "How about we get this training camp started, yeah?"
"Yeah!" said most of the class.
"Wait, what is happening?" Mineta asked. "Where's the bathroom?"
"Oh, Eraser would use that old trick!" Pixie-Bob said with a girlish laugh.
"Yeah, so, you won't be taking the bus the rest of the way to camp," Aizawa said, his face the same dispassionate mask as always.
"Our cabin is at the foot of that mountain!" Mandalay said, pointing to the large forested peak that jutted up from the woods, which was easily more than a dozen kilometres away. "It's about ten in the morning right now. The best time we've ever seen is traversing the woods in two and a half hours. I guess you all could make it in about four hours, given the size of your group and the diversity of your Quirks."
"Wait, what is she talking about?" Sato asked, his voice unsteady.
"I believe our teachers intend for us to hike the rest of the way to camp!" Iida clarified from his spot at Izuku's side.
"You got it!" Pixie-Bob giggled. "But that's not all!" She brought her hand up to the headgear she wore, and her visor glowed. "My wonderful creations will be down there to keep you company, so don't you worry about not knowing the way to go."
"Creations?" Yaoyorozu asked timidly.
"Down there?" Todoroki echoed at the same time.
"See ya!" Pixie-Bob crouched down and plunged her hand into the loose dirt and gravel. Surprisingly, her hand kept going, as if the hard floor the rest of them were standing on had become liquid for her.
The students panicked. They tried to avoid the flood of dirt and earth that erupted from the ground and carried them off their feet, but it was too fast to fight. It was as if a liquid wave of earth had suddenly decided to wash them away from the shore of the clearing. The students tumbled through the air, and Ochako grabbed onto the people nearest her, Mina and Tsu, and made all three of them weightless so that they hovered down to the ground as their momentum brought them closer and closer to the forest floor below the clearing. A few other students, like Sero, Mineta, and Iida, were mobile enough to repurpose the fall into an acrobatic landing using their Quirks. Izuku somehow managed to, intentionally or not, get himself tangled in a tree and halted his fall that way. Yaoyorozu landed on a cushion she made in the moment before impact, and Todoroki created a slide made out of ice that clung to a tree he'd managed to just brush with his hand on his way past, and slid to the ground safely. Most of the others tumbled to the ground harshly, though none of them seemed particularly injured beyond a few scrapes and scratches. Ochako looked around and saw that none of the students had escaped Pixie-Bob's power move. The entirety of Class 1-A had been thrown into the forest below.
"Make it to the campsite by sunset and you'll get a special prize," Aizawa said with one of his terrifying sardonic grins.
"It's fine, guys!" Kaminari said. "We can get through this."
"Yeah, if we can survive all that's happened to us so far, then hiking is gonna be a piece of cake!" Kirishima cheered.
"Why do you feel the need to—ow!" Izuku said, dropping from the branches he'd fallen in and landing seemingly harmlessly on his back with an unimpressed look on his face. He got up and looked around at his overly enthusiastic friend. "Don't jinx it."
"Come on, Midoriya!" Kirishima said, putting his arm around Izuku's shoulders. Ochako didn't miss the small smile that Izuku gave at the touch. "You can't say that we're not strong enough to do this!"
"I'm not saying that," Izuku said, shrugging out of the side-hug. "I'm just being realistic. Do you think that Aizawa's first test for us this week is going to be just hiking?"
At that exact moment, a roar ripped through the air from deep within the forest. Birds fled, causing them to blot out the sunny summer sky for a moment as they escaped whatever it was that had made the bloodcurdling sound. Izuku gave Kirishima a look as he held his arms out, as if to silently say, 'I told you so,' without having to say it.
"Come on, guys," Ochako said, breaking the silence that had filled the air with buzzing tension as not a single member of their class dared to be the one to enter the forest first. "Kirishima's still right, either way. We've got this."
"Yeah, the Hosu Heroes will get us through this!" Hagakure cheered.
"Do not call us that," Todoroki said icily.
"Seriously," Izuku muttered.
The hero course students of 1-A gathered their courage and took off into the woods, not knowing what they'd find or when they'd emerge. The one thing they did know was that they had to do this, and go beyond — plus ultra. Ochako wouldn't let her classmates fail to achieve their dreams if she could help it. They were all going to get stronger together.
1-A dragged themselves into the clearing on the other end of the Beasts' Forest seven hours later. They came in waves. The first group to emerge from the forest, scratched, beaten, bruised, and slightly bloody, was made up of Izuku, Ochako, Todoroki, Iida, and Tokoyami. The five of them had powers that made crushing the opponents they'd faced — beasts created out of twisted mud and dirt, clods of earth given the spark of life so that they may rise and do them harm — pretty easy in the grand scheme of things. Izuku had disintegrated so many mud monsters that he had actually lost count a couple of times. The others had each killed a couple dozen earth beasts, and had finally made it to the campsite about an hour before sunset. Izuku limped alongside Ochako, and they leaned on each other to stay standing. Todoroki stumbled, and kept a low-temperature fire burning in his left hand that slowly began to melt all the ice that had accumulated on his body during the fighting. Black, sooty smoke poured out of Iida's engines, but he was the only one who kept an even stride. Dark Shadow retreated into Tokoyami's body the second he broke out of the treeline and the sun touched both him and his Quirk. The five of them came to rest in front of Aizawa, Mandalay, Pixie-Bob, and that one little kid standing off to the side like he had been before. He was really bugging Izuku. Who was he? Why was there a kid around when they were doing legitimate hero training?
"Congratulations, you five!" Mandalay said, smiling. "I admit, when I announced the top score earlier, I may have used the time it took for us Pussycats to clear the Beasts' Forest. You still did well, though!" She sheepishly wrung her gloved hands together.
"Of course," Izuku sighed raggedly.
"Ooh, but you lot especially were so good at fighting my earth beasts!" Pixie-Bob exclaimed, bouncing between each of the five students who'd appeared first. "Half-Cold Half-Hot, Engine, Dark Shadow, Zero Gravity, Decimation! Especially you!" She fixed her eyes on Ochako, and took her by the face, which quickly turned red. "You were exceptional. These other little kittens have speed and power, but you have both."
"Uh, thanks?" Ochako said, her tone making it into a question rather than a statement.
"You'll all do wonderfully here, though!" Pixie-Bob said, addressing the other students once again. "Oh, and here come more of your classmates!"
The second wave of students included Ashido, Shoji, Asui, Kirishima, Ojiro, Aoyama, and Sero. Pixie-Bob went on a similar tirade with them, rambling about their strengths and praising them based on what she thought they'd done better than anyone else. She seemed to pick favourites, however, as Shoji became the focus of her glowing endorsement due to his sheer versatility, blending reconnaissance and information gathering skills with raw combat power. The last group that arrived was composed of the rest of 1-A, meaning Sato, Kaminari, Mineta, Koda, Hagakure, and Jiro. For their little group, Pixie-Bob seemed to latch onto Koda, since he'd also gone down the route of mixing the offensive potential of controlling all sorts of animals with the potential for information gathering. Izuku tuned that out and looked down at his right hand, the hand he'd allowed to remain uncovered. He looked down at the empty space where his middle finger should have been and lamented the fact that he had elected to leave his prosthetic finger back at the dorms. Izuku had fallen into a bad habit, he knew it, but seeing his hand in its ugly, mangled state gave him motivation to train harder. He'd never get hurt like that again. He'd be stronger the next time that he had to fight for his life. He clenched his hand into a fist and focused on the churning shame that burned his insides when he felt the phantom sensation of his middle finger touching his palm.
"Anyway, you all made it just before sundown, so like I said, you get a special prize," Aizawa said, beckoning the students to follow and interrupting Pixie-Bob's interrogation of the students.
1-A followed Aizawa into an undercover area filled with tables, and revealed with a subdued, flat tone that dinner had been cooked for them. "Eat up. The Pussycats were nice enough to feed you this first night, but don't think you'll get that luxury all week. Tomorrow, and for the rest of your stay here, you're cooking for yourselves, so savour this gift while you can."
The class all sat down to eat, and the curry that the Pussycats had made for them turned out to be delicious. Izuku and his normal friend group — Ochako, Todoroki, Iida, Ashido, Kirishima — sat together and ate in a hurry. Naturally, Kirishima got so excited by the food that his energy and Izuku's fed into each other and they started a speed-eating contest before long. They both finished off two bowls before anyone else had finished half of one. The others seemed to be more subdued after such a long day, though, and even Ashido, who normally was the instigator of shenanigans among them, ate with only a half-hearted poke at Ochako about how she was always the teachers' favourites, first with All Might and now with Pixie-Bob. Izuku wasn't shocked by that, though. She had that effect on more than just her teachers. Iida even said so himself, as he complimented Ochako on her well-rounded personality and skills. Shoto was the only one who didn't join in on the conversation, which wasn't unusual, but Izuku could tell by the way his eyes kept sweeping around the edges of the dining area that he was troubled. Did he expect an attack? It had been a while since they'd fought with Bakugo and Stain, and all the authorities they'd spoken to about it had said to keep a lookout for any further attempts on their lives, but did Todoroki really expect them to attack their summer camp?
"What's up, Todoroki?" Ochako asked, clearly having noticed something as well.
"Do any of you know who that child is?" he asked, surprising all in their group. When all of them answered in the negative, he frowned. Ochako had to ask in order to get him to elaborate. "It's strange, isn't it? A child accompanying pro heroes."
"Yeah, you don't see that very often," Izuku said with an uncertain tone. "But maybe he's just one of their kids. It's not impossible for one of the Pussycats to have had children."
"Yeah, they've been around since we were that young at least," Ashido said.
Pixie-Bob, who'd been passing by at that very moment, said, "Don't be rude, young lady! I'm eighteen at heart!"
"Right, sorry!" Ashido sheepishly laughed.
"Ashido isn't wrong," Iida said, seemingly only when he was certain that Pixie-Bob wouldn't hear him. Izuku found some amusement in that, as between the Hosu Incident and this, Iida had turned out to have something of a mischievous streak. "It wouldn't be unusual for one of the Pussycats to have a child. They're popular pro heroes, who would overlook them as potential partners?"
"Careful, bro," Kirishima said with a laugh. "Sounds like you have a crush on the Pussycats when you say it like that."
Iida promptly crumpled and went back to eating his dinner with a sullen look on his face, his cheeks bright red. The conversation continued around him, as Ochako said, "Why are you so interested, Todoroki?"
"Earlier, before everything happened, he had this look on his face. He seemed sad, or angry. And then when we all arrived here, he had the same look. I suppose I'm curious about why that is," Todoroki explained.
Izuku's eyes caught on a shape half-hidden behind a corner of the storage cabin right next to the dining area. It was small, but it was shifting back and forth, rocking. Izuku kept himself from smiling. "Maybe you can ask him yourself."
Todoroki looked at Izuku with a questioning tightness to his eyes, but then he noticed that Izuku wasn't quite looking at him and turned around to follow his line of sight. He then noticed the boy watching them from around the corner, which caused the kid to get spooked, probably by the intensity of Todoroki's expression if Izuku had to guess. "Maybe I will." Todoroki stood up, abandoned his curry, and followed the kid behind the corner of the cabin.
"Wait, right now?" Ochako asked.
"Dude, come back!" Kirishima called. "Your dinner's gonna get cold!"
"Don't worry about that, Iida's burning with the heat of a thousand suns right now!" Ashido giggled.
"So, the Pussycats, huh?" Ochako asked with her own muffled laugh.
"Please do not ask me to elaborate further."
The crunch of his shoes on the dirt and gravel likely gave away Shoto's approach before he'd even rounded the corner. The further away from the others he got, the colder the air became, until it became a soothing kind of soft, gentle warmth, rather than the sweaty, itchy heat that the summer had brought to him so far. His scar itched when it was hot, so Shoto vastly preferred the cold, and he found a source of calm in the cooler air away from his classmates and the steaming curry they'd eaten for dinner. He turned around the far corner of the cabin and came face to face with the little boy he'd been so curious about. He was small, even for a young child, and Shoto couldn't pinpoint his age accurately. He was between four and six, certainly. The child looked up at him and took a step back, his eyes wide with what looked like either fear or embarrassment, maybe both.
"You haven't eaten anything, have you?" Shoto asked without a preamble.
"N-No, what's it matter to you?" the boy said. He had his fists clenched and he was standing on his toes, as if he was ready to run.
"There's no reason to be scared," Shoto said.
"What?" the boy said, his voice high and coarse. "Who's scared?"
"I thought …" Shoto paused, taking his time to consider his next action. "My apologies. I must have been mistaken. You really should eat soon. The curry is getting cold, but I could heat it up for you if you'd like."
"Just go away," the boy said, seemingly trying to make himself look taller by standing on his toes, as if Shoto couldn't see what he was doing. "I don't want any pity from a wannabe like you."
Shoto raised his eyebrows in shock. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."
The boy laughed, but he didn't look very amused. "All you hero types are the same. You're pretending to care about some dumb kid, but the second you go back to your friends, you'll forget this ever happened."
"Why would I do that?" Shoto asked.
Something about his tone must have set the boy off, because he suddenly lashed out and tried to throw a punch at Shoto right at hip-level. Oh, that's what he was going for. For a brief fraction of a second, appearing and vanishing faster than Shoto could even register what the feeling was, his training kicked in and his right hand twitched, as if to use his Quirk. As soon as the thought came to Shoto, though, he ignored it, and simply stepped to the side of the boy's planned punch. The child stumbled forward, and it was clear that he'd held no malice and no focus with the attack, and had just wildly swung his arm, likely in order to get Shoto to go away. He hadn't even had a chance to really ask the boy what he wanted to know, though.
"What's your name?" he asked
"None of your business," the boy pouted.
Shoto paused, and didn't let his confusion and irritation show on his face. Why did this boy hate him so much? "My name is—"
"I don't wanna know your name. I don't care," the kid said, refusing to meet him in the eye.
"Okay. Something you do seem to care a lot about is me and my classmates staying here. Why?" Shoto asked, plain and simple. He didn't want to overcomplicate things like the last time he reached out to someone.
"Because I don't wanna be around a bunch of stupid idiots who think that being a hero is some awesome goal that they should be worshipped for," the boy said with a sharp glare at Shoto. "You're just people, and you're gonna learn to use your Quirks to hurt people, but because you're gonna have special pieces of plastic in your pockets while you do it, you're gonna be the ones who are celebrated. Meanwhile, the families you leave behind are left with nothing, not that you ever care about your families."
"I'm not sure I understand," Shoto said, his eyebrows drawn together in thought. "You don't like heroes because they fight villains?"
The boy paused for a moment, and a deep anger exploded out of him. He swung his fist again, and Shoto didn't dodge it. His body's instinct was to counter the attack. Just as he registered that instinct and what it meant, a memory froze him where he stood. He'd learned that instinct from being in the same position as the child was now, cowering under someone much bigger and stronger than himself. He took the punch, and doubled over into a crouching position when the boy hit him in the groin. Shoto made no noise of pain, but he did look up at the boy with narrowed eyes. It didn't seem to have made any difference, given the child any release of emotion. It just served to make him angrier, given that his eyes seemed to burn with an even brighter rage than they had before.
"Pathetic," the boy said.
"Kota!" a voice, Mandalay's if Shoto remembered right, called from the undercover dining area.
The boy, presumably the Kota that Mandalay was calling to, startled at the call, and gave Shoto one last look as he finally stood back up after getting hit in such a sensitive spot. "Don't talk to me again." Kota then ran off to answer his summons.
Shoto stood there for a moment looking at the corner that Kota turned around in order to break his line of sight. Not that you ever care about your families, he'd said. That claim rang in Shoto's ears long after Kota had left. He gave it some thought, and wondered … he'd never truly spoken with his siblings, and never had as thorough a conversation as to warrant asking for their opinion on his goal of becoming the number one hero. It had always been a known factor, his heroic aspirations. Shoto's goal had never been questioned once in his life, because until recently, it hadn't truly been his own. It had been his. He was his own person, though, and he was reclaiming his own dream one day at a time. Did Fuyumi disapprove of his continued pursuit of heroism as a career? Did she think he ought to abandon his goal? Shoto did not know. Not knowing was suddenly sickening to him. What had Kota been through in order to develop this outlook on their hero society? How had Shoto never thought of it this way before? He resolved to connect with the child. Not only because of the new questions he had in the aftermath of their conversation that burned in Shoto's chest the longer he left them unasked, but because of Kota's uncanny resemblance to a hero duo that he, Endeavor, had worked with a number of times in the past. Shoto resolved to learn what the son of the Water Hose duo really thought about heroes, and why.
The next morning, training started early. Earlier than any of the students had expected or been happy with. In an unholy move, Aizawa had woken the students up at sunrise, and had put them to work as soon as their eyes were open. That was how the members of Class 1-A had found themselves spread out across a few different clearings on the Pussycats' property before six in the morning. They were quickly joined by 1-B, who'd arrived later in the night than 1-A's morning journey and thus had dodged having to hike through the Beasts' Forest for seven hours. With them came Midnight and Present Mic, who explained that they were extra muscle that Principal Nezu had asked to tag along on the camp trip so that they could protect the kids should another attack like the USJ or Hosu occur. That revelation had dampened the kids' spirits significantly even further than Aizawa's training schedule from Hell had, so the day was off to a good start in the eyes of the pros. Aizawa took the time to remind all students across both classes that they weren't at this camp to have fun. They were there to get stronger. That had given the kids a little bit of a boost.
The Hosu Heroes — a name which Izuku and Todoroki were still trying to stop from catching on — were split up for their exercises. Iida was off doing endurance running, moving at top gear for as long as he possibly could and then a little bit beyond that in order to improve his ability to keep his engines going when Recipro's strain made him stall. Todoroki was tasked with improving his speed at switching between his ice and fire, which would also hopefully further his body's resistance to his fire, which had mostly returned except for a few pink spots on his skin after particularly intense training sessions. Ochako had been given weighted shoes and had been instructed to complete her regular workouts while maintaining her Quirk on herself for as long as possible to build her tolerance to the nausea her Zero Gravity gave her after exceeding its limits, and also force her to become used to exerting herself while weightless so that she can manoeuvre correctly in the air without losing her balance or incorrectly estimating how much force was needed for an action in the middle of a battle. The rest of the class had specific exercises they were supposed to do, too. Kirishima and Ojiro were sparring, as every time they pushed their Quirks to the limit to defend against the other, they both improved. Ashido was pushing the viscosity and potency of her acid to the absolute maximum that she could produce, and Asui was trying her best to mimic Ashido's technique and improve her use of the toxic mucus she could secrete. Every single student was completing a personalised training routine that was made to improve their Quirks.
Aizawa took Izuku away from the general area in which the others were training and sat him down on a fallen tree a dozen metres or so into the forest, far enough so that the sounds of the others' training faded away. Izuku wondered if one of Pixie-Bob's earth beasts or if something else had knocked the tree down, but when Aizawa returned with a deep, wide bucket filled with all sorts of small, handheld items — pencils, childrens' toys, broken cell phones, even twigs and small branches — his attention was caught.
"Here's how this is going to work. In the past, you've been able to control the speed at which your Quirk destroys something once you've touched it with enough of your fingers to activate it. Is that right?" Aizawa said.
"Yeah, basically," Izuku said.
"Explain to me how that works," Aizawa said again, equally as flatly as before.
"Alright, well …" Izuku had to pause to think about it. He'd never really explained how his Quirk felt in his body to another person before. "It's kinda like a slider in a video game, y'know?" Aizawa stared at him, and Izuku thought again about assuming that the man had ever touched a game in his life. "Well, it's kinda like a scale in my head, or maybe my heart, and my Quirk's output is equal to wherever the slider is on the scale. It feels like it's naturally set to the middle, but I've been able to push that slider further toward one end or the other in special circumstances. Like during the USJ attack, I was able to overwhelm that Nomu's regeneration. If the default is the middle of the scale, fifty, then I think I might've set my Quirk to ninety, or even a hundred at the USJ."
"That makes sense. Can you make it go lower than fifty?" Aizawa asked.
"I think so," Izuku replied, his expression tense as he concentrated on remembering. "I can take the slider down to thirty or so when I'm really in the zone. It's easier to bring it up than it is to make it go back down, though."
"Good," Aizawa said. "But it could be better."
"What do you have in mind?" Izuku asked, peering into the bucket.
"First, you're going to put this on," Aizawa said, bringing a strip of cloth out of his pocket and throwing it to Izuku. "Cover your eyes with it and put your hands out. I'm going to drop things into your hands at random, and you're going to try and catch them with all your fingers without destroying them. You'll be able to bring your slider down to zero by the end of the week."
Izuku grinned, and looked down at his hands, which were gripping the cloth with care to not disintegrate it. If he could do that, he'd have full control over this Quirk of his. The way Aizawa had phrased it wasn't that he had a possibility of achieving that level of control, he'd been sure, certain that Izuku was going to get to that level during this summer camp. He smiled up at his teacher and nodded. He carefully tied the cloth around his face, blinding himself, and held his hands out like Aizawa had instructed him to.
"Bring it on."
